In the last blog post I mentioned that we saw some whales on our first day at sea. Well...we ended up seeing hundreds of Humpback whales and a couple of pods of Orca as well.
At first we were content getting some nice tight shots of the whale tails as they arched their bodies and prepared for their deep dives. I was once again using the
Canon R5 Mark II camera with the
Canon RF 100-500mm lens.
We took photo after photo at different angles.
Once we had a plethora of tight shots, I encouraged everyone to get photos showing the whales and the surroundings. This background helps to show that we are in Alaska, otherwise these whale tail photos could be taken anywhere and not put in context.
We also worked hard to get multiple whales in one shot. But we still wanted more.
And we did get more. At one point this Humpback whale came right next to the boat, swimming upside down to catch fish that were swimming near the surface of the water. It was an awesome sight for all of us.
We had numerous Humpbacks around the boat, at it was great to get some face shots as well.
This one came up head first out of the water. So cool!
We were hoping to get a good breach (jumping out of the water) shot, and we all did.
It was especially helpful when a whale would breach and then do it again in the same spot. This allowed up to be a little more prepared to capture images like this.
Even our most novice shooters got great breach photos!
Even I was very excited to get photos like these. I have photographed Humpback whales in Monterey, CA, the Hawaiian Islands, and in Costa Rica, but I have never gotten a great breach photo until now.
After capturing a ton of photos of the whales from our boat, I thought it was time to launch my drone and try to get some overhead shots of these huge mammals. The water was so calm, and so easy to see through, that it made it easier for me to locate the whales on the screen of my iPhone (which acts as the monitor for my drone).
These photos came out really nice but the video was a highlight for me!
Click on the photo above or HERE to see that video of both the porpoises riding the bow of our boat and the overhead shots of the Humpback whales. To me, the drone video was some of the coolest content I captured in Alaska on this trip.
Towards the end of our trip, I decided to photograph the Humpbacks in a different way, capturing just the spray of the water being expelled from their blowholes, lit by the setting sun.
In all of my whale watching trips off the coast of California I have never been lucky enough to capture photos of the Orca whales, but that all changed on this trip. We had a chance to capture images of two adult Orca and two youngsters.
This one young whale popped up to see what was going on.
This last shot was in better light and shows all four of the Orcas as they passed by our boat. It was another awesome moment for my photo tour guests. Regardless of the photos, it was just amazing to watch them swim by the boat. At one point, they came right up to the boat, turned upside down and went right underneath us. They were so close that we could not capture photos with our long lenses, but we all loved taking it in with our eyes.
More Alaska images to come!
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